The Westminster Declaration and Techno-Optimism
You wait years for a new movement, then two come along at the same time.
First,
The Westminster Declaration
We write as journalists, artists, authors, activists, technologists, and academics to warn of increasing international censorship that threatens to erode centuries-old democratic norms.
Coming from the left, right, and centre, we are united by our commitment to universal human rights and freedom of speech, and we are all deeply concerned about attempts to label protected speech as ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and other ill-defined terms.
This abuse of these terms has resulted in the censorship of ordinary people, journalists, and dissidents in countries all over the world.
Such interference with the right to free speech suppresses valid discussion about matters of urgent public interest, and undermines the foundational principles of representative democracy.
Across the globe, government actors, social media companies, universities, and NGOs are increasingly working to monitor citizens and rob them of their voices. These large-scale coordinated efforts are sometimes referred to as the ‘Censorship-Industrial Complex.’
https://westminsterdeclaration.org/
(signatories at bottom of post)
and Techno-Optimism from Marc Andreesen
“Our species is 300,000 years old. For the first 290,000 years, we were foragers, subsisting in a way that’s still observable among the Bushmen of the Kalahari and the Sentinelese of the Andaman Islands. Even after Homo Sapiens embraced agriculture, progress was painfully slow. A person born in Sumer in 4,000BC would find the resources, work, and technology available in England at the time of the Norman Conquest or in the Aztec Empire at the time of Columbus quite familiar. Then, beginning in the 18th Century, many people’s standard of living skyrocketed. What brought about this dramatic improvement, and why?” — Marian Tupy
Lies
We are being lied to.
We are told that technology takes our jobs, reduces our wages, increases inequality, threatens our health, ruins the environment, degrades our society, corrupts our children, impairs our humanity, threatens our future, and is ever on the verge of ruining everything. We are told to be angry, bitter, and resentful about technology. We are told to be pessimistic.
Our civilization is built on technology. Technology is the glory of human ambition and achievement, the spearhead of progress, and the realization of our potential. For hundreds of years, we properly glorified this – until recently. I am here to bring the good news. We can advance to a far superior way of living, and of being. We have the tools, the systems, the ideas. We have the will. It is time, once again, to raise the technology flag. It is time to be Techno-Optimists.
We agree with Paul Collier when he says, “Economic growth is not a cure-all, but lack of growth is a kill-all.” We believe everything good is downstream of growth. We believe not growing is stagnation, which leads to zero-sum thinking, internal fighting, degradation, collapse, and ultimately death.
We believe markets do not require people to be perfect, or even well intentioned – which is good, because, have you met people? Adam Smith: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages.”
We believe a market sets wages as a function of the marginal productivity of the worker. Therefore technology – which raises productivity – drives wages up, not down. This is perhaps the most counterintuitive idea in all of economics, but it’s true, and we have 300 years of history that prove it. We believe in Milton Friedman’s observation that human wants and needs are infinite. We believe markets also increase societal well being by generating work in which people can productively engage. We believe a Universal Basic Income would turn people into zoo animals to be farmed by the state. Man was not meant to be farmed; man was meant to be useful, to be productive, to be proud.
We believe energy need not expand to the detriment of the natural environment. We have the silver bullet for virtually unlimited zero-emissions energy today – nuclear fission. In 1973, President Richard Nixon called for Project Independence, the construction of 1,000 nuclear power plants by the year 2000, to achieve complete US energy independence. Nixon was right; we didn’t build the plants then, but we can now, anytime we decide we want to.
We believe a second energy silver bullet is coming – nuclear fusion. We should build that as well. The same bad ideas that effectively outlawed fission are going to try to outlaw fusion. We should not let them. We believe there is no inherent conflict between the techno-capital machine and the natural environment. Per-capita US carbon emissions are lower now than they were 100 years ago, even without nuclear power.
We believe technology is the solution to environmental degradation and crisis. A technologically advanced society improves the natural environment, a technologically stagnant society ruins it. If you want to see environmental devastation, visit a former Communist country. The socialist USSR was far worse for the natural environment than the capitalist US. Google the Aral Sea.
We believe Andy Warhol was right when he said, “What's great about this country is America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good.” Same for the browser, the smartphone, the chatbot.
We believe the global population can quite easily expand to 50 billion people or more, and then far beyond that as we ultimately settle other planets. We believe that out of all of these people will come scientists, technologists, artists, and visionaries beyond our wildest dreams. We believe the ultimate mission of technology is to advance life both on Earth and in the stars.
However, we are not Utopians. We are adherents to what Thomas Sowell calls the Constrained Vision. We believe the Constrained Vision – contra the Unconstrained Vision of Utopia, Communism, and Expertise – means taking people as they are, testing ideas empirically, and liberating people to make their own choices. We believe in not Utopia, but also not Apocalypse. We believe change only happens on the margin – but a lot of change across a very large margin can lead to big outcomes. While not Utopian, we believe in what Brad DeLong terms “slouching toward Utopia” – doing the best fallen humanity can do, making things better as we go.
We believe, as Richard Feynman said, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” And, “I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.” We believe in local knowledge, the people with actual information making decisions, not in playing God.
We believe in what the Greeks called eudaimonia through arete – flourishing through excellence. We believe technology is universalist. Technology doesn’t care about your ethnicity, race, religion, national origin, gender, sexuality, political views, height, weight, hair or lack thereof. Technology is built by a virtual United Nations of talent from all over the world. Anyone with a positive attitude and a cheap laptop can contribute. Technology is the ultimate open society. We believe in the Silicon Valley code of “pay it forward”, trust via aligned incentives, generosity of spirit to help one another learn and grow.
Our present society has been subjected to a mass demoralization campaign for six decades – against technology and against life – under varying names like “existential risk”, “sustainability”, “ESG”, “Sustainable Development Goals”, “social responsibility”, “stakeholder capitalism”, “Precautionary Principle”, “trust and safety”, “tech ethics”, “risk management”, “de-growth”, “the limits of growth”. This demoralization campaign is based on bad ideas of the past – zombie ideas, many derived from Communism, disastrous then and now – that have refused to die. Our enemy is stagnation. Our enemy is anti-merit, anti-ambition, anti-striving, anti-achievement, anti-greatness. Our enemy is statism, authoritarianism, collectivism, central planning, socialism. Our enemy is bureaucracy, vetocracy, gerontocracy, blind deference to tradition. Our enemy is corruption, regulatory capture, monopolies, cartels. Our enemy is institutions that in their youth were vital and energetic and truth-seeking, but are now compromised and corroded and collapsing – blocking progress in increasingly desperate bids for continued relevance, frantically trying to justify their ongoing funding despite spiraling dysfunction and escalating ineptness. Our enemy is the ivory tower, the know-it-all credentialed expert worldview, indulging in abstract theories, luxury beliefs, social engineering, disconnected from the real world, delusional, unelected, and unaccountable – playing God with everyone else’s lives, with total insulation from the consequences. Our enemy is speech control and thought control – the increasing use, in plain sight, of George Orwell’s “1984” as an instruction manual. Our enemy is Thomas Sowell’s Unconstrained Vision, Alexander Kojeve’s Universal and Homogeneous State, Thomas More’s Utopia. Our enemy is the Precautionary Principle, which would have prevented virtually all progress since man first harnessed fire. The Precautionary Principle was invented to prevent the large-scale deployment of civilian nuclear power, perhaps the most catastrophic mistake in Western society in my lifetime. The Precautionary Principle continues to inflict enormous unnecessary suffering on our world today. It is deeply immoral, and we must jettison it with extreme prejudice. Our enemy is deceleration, de-growth, depopulation – the nihilistic wish, so trendy among our elites, for fewer people, less energy, and more suffering and death.
Patron Saints of Techno-Optimism
https://x.com/pmarca/status/1713932016771797181?s=20
Entire post here
and Gary Marcus replies
Westminster Declaration signatories
Signatories
Matt Taibbi, Journalist, US
Michael Shellenberger, Public, US
Jonathan Haidt, Social Psychologist, NYU, US
John McWhorter, Linguist, Columbia, Author, US
Steven Pinker, Psychologist, Harvard, US
Julian Assange, Editor, Founder of Wikileaks, Australia
Tim Robbins, Actor, Filmmaker, US
Nadine Strossen, Professor of Law, NYLS, US
Glenn Loury, Economist, USA
Richard Dawkins, Biologist, UK
John Cleese, Comedian, Acrobat, UK
Slavoj Žižek, Philosopher, Author, Slovenia
Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University, US
Oliver Stone, Filmmaker, US
Edward Snowden, Whistleblower, US
Greg Lukianoff, President and CEO Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, USA
Stella Assange, Campaigner, UK
Glenn Greenwald, Journalist, US
Claire Fox, Founder of the Academy of Ideas, UK
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, Psychologist, Author, Canada
Bari Weiss, Journalist, USA
Peter Hitchens, Author, Journalist, UK
Niall Ferguson, Historian, Stanford, UK
Matt Ridley, Journalist, Author, UK
Melissa Chen, Journalist, Spectator, Singapore/US
Yanis Varoufakis, Economist, Greece
Peter Boghossian, Philosopher, Founding Faculty Fellow, University of Austin, US
Michael Shermer, Science Writer, US
Alan Sokal, Professor of Mathematics, UCL, UK
Sunetra Gupta, Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology, Oxford, UK
Jay Bhattacharya, Professor, Stanford, US
Martin Kulldorf, Professor of Medicine (on leave), Harvard, US
Aaron Kheiriaty, Psychiatrist, Author, USA
Chris Hedges, Journalist, Author, USA
Lee Fang, Independent Journalist, US
Alex Gutentag, Journalist, US
Iain McGilchrist, Psychiatrist, Philosopher, UK
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Human Rights Activist, Author, Netherlands
Konstantin Kisin, Author, UK
Leighton Woodhouse, Public, US
Andrew Lowenthal, liber-net, Australia
Aaron Mate, Journalist, USA
Izabella Kaminska, Journalist, The Blind Spot, UK
Nina Power, Writer, UK
Kmele Foster, Journalist, Media Entrepreneur, USA
Toby Young, Journalist, Free Speech Union, UK
Winston Marshall, Journalist, The Spectator, UK
Jacob Siegel, Tablet, US/Israel
Ulrike Guerot, Founder of European Democracy Lab, Germany
Heather E. Heying, Evolutionary Biologist, USA
Bret Weinstein, Evolutionary Biologist, USA
Martina Pastorelli, Independent Journalist, Italy
Leandro Narloch, Independent Journalist, Brazil
Ana Henkel, Independent Journalist, Brazil
Mia Ashton, Journalist, Canada
Micha Narberhaus, The Protopia Lab, Spain/Germany
Alex Sheridan, Free Speech Ireland
Ben Scallan, Gript Media, Ireland
Thomas Fazi, Independent Journalist, Italy
Jean F. Queralt, Technologist, Founder @ The IO Foundation, Malaysia/Spain
Phil Shaw, Campaigner, Operation People, New Zealand
Jeremy Hildreth, Independent, UK
Craig Snider, Independent, US
Eve Kay, TV Producer, UK
Helen Joyce, Journalist, UK
Dietrich Brüggemann, Filmmaker, Germany
Adam B. Coleman, Founder of Wrong Speak Publishing, US
Helen Pluckrose, Author, US
Michael Nayna, Filmmaker, Australia
Paul Rossi, Educator, Vertex Partnership Academics, US
Juan Carlos Girauta, Politician, Spain
Andrew Neish, KC, UK
Steven Berkoff, Actor, Playright, UK
Patrick Hughes, Artist, UK
Adam Creighton, Journalist, Australia
Julia Hartley-Brewer, Journalist, UK
Robert Cibis, Filmmaker, Germany
Piers Robinson, Organization for Propaganda Studies, UK
Dirk Pohlmann, Journalist, Germany
Mathias Bröckers, Author, Journalist, Germany
Kira Phillips, Documentary Filmmaker, UK
Diane Atkinson, Historian, Biographer, UK
Eric Kaufmann, Professor of Politics, Birkbeck, University of London, Canada
Laura Dodsworth, Journalist and Author, UK
Nellie Bowles, Journalist, USA
Andrew Tettenborn, Professor of Law, Swansea University, UK
Julius Grower, Fellow, St. Hugh’s College, UK
Nick Dixon, Comedian, UK
Dominic Frisby, Comedian, UK
James Orr, Associate Professor, University of Cambridge, UK
Brendan O’Neill, Journalist, UK
Andrew Roberts, Historian, UK
Robert Tombs, Historian, UK
Ben Schwarz, Journalist, USA
Xavier Azalbert, Investigative Scientific Journalist, France
Doug Stokes, International Relations Professor, University of Exeter, UK
James Allan, Professor of Law, University of Queensland, UK
David McGrogan, Professor of Law, Northumbria University, UK
Jacob Mchangama, Author, Denmark
Nigel Biggar, Chairman, Free Speech Union, UK
David Goodhart, Journalist, Author, UK
Catherine Austin Fitts, The Solari Report, Netherlands
Matt Goodwin, Politics Professor, University of Kent, UK
Catherine Liu, Cultural Theorist, Author, USA
Stefan Millius, Journalist, Switzerland
Philip Hamburger, Professor of Law, Columbia, USA
Rueben Kirkham, Co-Director, Free Speech Union of Australia, Australia
Jeffrey Tucker, Author, USA
Sarah Gon, Director, Free Speech Union, South Africa
Dara Macdonald, Co-Director, Free Speech Union, Australia
Jonathan Ayling, Chief Executive, Free Speech Union, New Zealand
David Zweig, Journalist, Author, USA
Juan Soto Ivars, Author, Spain
Colin Wright, Evolutionary Biologist, USA
Gad Saad, Professor, Evolutionary Behavioral Scientist, Author, Canada
Robert W. Malone, MD, MS, USA
Jill Glasspool-Malone, PhD., USA
Jordi Pigem, Philosopher, Author, Spain
Holly Lawford-Smith, Associate Professor in Political Philosophy, University of Melbourne, Australia
Michele Santoro, Journalist, TV host, Presenter, Italy
Dr. James Smith, Podcaster, Literature Scholar, RHUL, UK
Francis Foster, Comedian, UK
Coleman Hughes, Writer, Podcaster, USA
Marco Bassani, Political Theorist, Historian, Milan University, Italy
Isabella Loiodice, Professor of Comparative Public Law, University of Bari, Italy
Luca Ricolfi, Professor, Sociologist, Turin University, Italy
Marcello Foa, Journalist, Former President of Rai, Italy
Andrea Zhok, Philosopher, University of Milan, Italy
Paolo Cesaretti, Professor of Byzantine Civilization, University of Bergamo, Italy
Alberto Contri, Mass Media Expert, Italy
Carlo Lottieri, Philosopher, University of Verona, Italy
Alessandro Di Battista, Political activist, Writer, Italy
Paola Mastrocola, Writer, Italy
Carlo Freccero, Television Author, Media Expert, Italy
Giorgio Bianchi, Independent Journalist, Italy
Nello Preterossi, Professor, University of Salerno, Scientific Director of the Italian Institute for Philosophical Studies, Italy
Efrat Fenigson, Journalist, Podcaster, Israel
Eli Vieira, Journalist, Genetic Biologist, Brazil
Stephen Moore, Author and Analyst, Canada